Forever Elvis

"Not with him here, I'm not," Giannelli said, laughing. While she has children and grandchildren -- all Elvis fans -- it's clear The King also keeps her company.

"When he died, I wore black for a month," Giannelli said. "And I cried. I just couldn't believe it."

Presley died 30 years ago today, the victim at age 42 of a heart attack and of polypharmacy -- a liberal ingestion of many prescription drugs.

But the King lives vividly in memory and in music. Forget about Elvis sightings and tacky Elvis impersonators. Remember instead the judgment of conductor Leonard Bernstein, who said flatly, "Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century.

"He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes," Bernstein said. "It's a whole new social revolution... the '60s comes from it."

"I saw him at Madison Square Garden in 1972," said Tom Mattiaccio of Bethel, a psychotherapist and Elvis scholar. "He was absolutely magnificent."

"I was 11 or 12," Parks, 52, of Danbury, said. "What do you know when you're 11? But I loved him. He was a great singer and a great performer. I still love him. Whenever I feel down I watch one of his movies and I feel better -- 'Blue Hawaii' is great."

"I have the same birthday as Elvis -- Jan. 8," said Betty Presnell, 64, of Newtown, and a fan since the 1950s. "I always tell people 'It's me and Elvis's birthday.'"

At the Danbury Hospital coffee shop, where she works, Presnell -- also born in Tennessee, where Elvis made his home -- said they have an Elvis Thursday every week. They play Elvis songs on the coffee shop sound system and let everybody rock along.

"I just love his voice," Presnell said. "He sings and he still stays humble. He loves gospel music, and I like that about him. And I like that he never forgot where he came from."

Like many Presley fans in the area, Presnell's Elvis is the Elvis of records and TV and movies, not the live performer.

"I never saw him live," she said. "We were always going to go see him. What can I say? Life happens."

Judy Chapin-Pinckney, 65, of Danbury, did see Elvis live, in a prelude to his most famous performance -- his first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Sept. 9, 1956.

"A friend of mine had a dad who was in the music business," Chapin-Pinckney said. "Because there was such an interest in his performance, the Sullivan show decided to let his fans into the dress rehearsal."

Chapin-Pinckney said the balcony of fans -- almost all young girls -- was instructed "to be polite and behave ourselves."

That lasted until Elvis stepped on stage. Then, she said, the place went nuts.

He sang "Don't Be Cruel" with the vocal group The Jordanaires, she said. "But if you were there, you couldn't hear the songs because the crowd was screaming so loud."

She then went home to Stamford and watched the Sullivan show on TV. Her father, afraid Elvis the Pelvis might corrupt his daughter, insisted on watching, too.

"I said, 'Dad -- I've already seen him today,'" Chapin-Pinckney said. She still has a signed Elvis picture from that day, inscribed "To Judy Chapin, Best Wishes, Elvis."

Others remember the later Sullivan shows, when the cameras only showed Presley from the waist up. "He could wiggle his little finger and that's about it," said Shirley Carmignani, 67, of Danbury.

Carmignani grew up with Elvis as the soundtrack to her life.

"At dances there would also be a certain love song he'd sing that couples would dance to," she said.

Carmignani once won a ticket to a Elvis cruise in Florida, only to have to skip the trip. There's still Graceland.

"I've never been to Graceland," she said. "But I'm retired now."

Danbury resident Jerry Madison saw Elvis live in 1959. The singer was tending Jeeps at an Army base in Germany in 1959, during his three-year stint in the military.

"I was in the Army engineers corps, and I did a lot of traveling around Europe," Madison said. "I was at an Army base in Germany -- I forget which one -- and there he was, standing in the motor pool. I saw him and talked to him. I still have a picture of him."

For Elvis' females fans, there is the matter of his hunka-hunka looks.

"He was just gorgeous," Rosemary DeLuca, 53, of New Fairfield, said. "I loved the way he looked."

DeLuca, 52, has visited Graceland. She admits to finding the place -- with all its curtains permanently drawn -- a bit depressing. But she thought the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, where Elvis cut his first records, were enthralling.

"To go into that studio and see it," she said. "I mean, that's the microphone that Elvis kissed."

And it's the records, inevitably, that will form the Elvis Presley legacy. Tom Mattiaccio, of Bethel, has created a four-hour audio documentary about his music that's now in the Library of Congress.

He's now writing a book, "Voice from the Heart of the Country," that will look at the ethnomusicology of Elvis' career -- how all the great strands of music in the South came together in Elvis and emerged as something new.

To hear him live, Mattiaccio said, was to hear someone immersing himself completely in his music.

"There's bluegrass, and country and western, the blues, gospel and Christian hymns," Mattiaccio said. "He took all these styles into a confluence and created a whole new idiom."

Much has been made of Presley being the first white man to successfully adapt the intonation and sound of rhythm and blues and make breakout, chart-busting hits out of them.

But Mattiaccio said the more he listens to Elvis, the more he appreciates his artistry, the way he could adapt his voice to any musical idiom and make it his own.

He said he's seen a friend's daughter start listening to Presley records.

"She said, 'He sings with his heart and soul,'" Mattiaccio said. "This was from a 10-year-old girl."

Contact Robert Miller

at bmiller@newstimes.com

or (203) 731-3345.

1. "Heartbreak Hotel"

2. "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You"

3. "Don't Be Cruel,"

4."Hound Dog"

5. "Love Me Tender"

6. "Too Much,"

7. "All Shook Up,"

8. "Teddy Bear"

9. "Jailhouse Rock"

10. "Don't"

11. "Hard Headed Woman,"

12. "A Big Hunk O' Love,"

13. "Stuck on You,

14. "It's Now or Never"

15. "Are You Lonesome Tonight?

16. "Surrender"

17. "Good Luck Charm"

18. "Suspicious Minds"

Celebrate Elvis

An Elvis Presley celebration and candlelight vigil is set for today starting at 5 p.m. at Duchess on White Street.